


It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing

by blu3mila



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Bloodletting, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blu3mila/pseuds/blu3mila
Summary: An essay on the Bloodletter and its symbols, historical references, relatively subjective connotations and blood. There is a lot to it.As of June 2018, a full, finalized version of this essay is being developed.





	It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing

 

"Your body contains about 5 litres of blood. Assuming you’re resting, this is pumped around your body in just one minute. Blood is vital to our survival and excessive blood loss can lead to shock and death."

Bloodborne considered that idea, laughed a little and merrily threw it out of the window.

“No,” it said.

”Blood loss won’t kill you. Excess blood won’t kill you either. In fact, nothing will kill you. But you’ll constantly die.”

Thus, the Dark Souls of Dark Souls came to be.

 

"Bloodborne is a new IP developed by Sony & Fromsoftware, following gameplay elements from the acclaimed Demon's & Dark Souls series. It is an Action RPG with focus on strategic combat choices, offering melee and ranged mechanics and replacing magic with gadgets and an arsenal of weapons," states the official game description.

Bloodborne can indeed be narrowed down to that, but doing so would mean ignoring a world filled with symbols and ideas that could have rightfully brought the game its popularity. Bloodborne’s world speaks of death and life, religion and faith, hope and hopelessness, blood (obviously) and many other topics, too numerous to spell out.

Keeping that in mind yet still wanting to talk about them, I've decided to explore the game through one object present in it.  
The Bloodletter.

The Bloodletter is a weapon that makes an appearance in the DLC "The Old Hunters" and in its original form is a mace that can be transformed into a double-handed weapon. Once transformed, the Bloodletter still resembles a mace, but a much longer one and grows a star-shaped organic mass at its tip.

To me, this item is full of symbols and contradictions that make it quite an allegory to the whole game; from bloodletting as healing to birth through death.

In this essay, I'm going to talk about the Bloodletter through the lens of history, modern perception, symbols and associations to explain my understanding of its appeal.

 

**BLOODLETTING**

 

The aspect of the weapon that I chose to start this analysis with came from its title, the Bloodletter.

Bloodletting has a meaning outside of the game context; it's a noun first recorded in 1175-1225 that is used to signify three things:

1.the act or practice of letting blood by opening a vein; phlebotomy  
2.bloodshed or slaughter  
3.bloodbath

The weapon is rightfully called that way; to perform the transformation the player has their character stab themselves in the chest with it to “draw upon blood from the inner reaches of one's body and soul" as the in-game description states.

The weapon draws blood from its wielder, uses this very blood for attack and as a result, excessive blood of the player and of their enemies is flying in all directions through the entire battle. All is rather characteristic for Bloodborne, but this also is where the first contradiction comes in.

The people living in the nightmarish city of Yharnam apparently had one strong reason against just moving. That reason was special blood found in the city that could cure any wound or disease. Thus, the main logic of the game came to be: inject blood to heal.

The Bloodletter goes very well against that logic; it takes the player’s blood to bring harm. That doesn’t feel too out of place, since there are great many ways in which yharnamites abused blood but it still presents an interesting contradiction, especially considering the history of bloodletting in our own world.

Here, bloodletting as a practice has been widespread for more than 3000 years and stopped being classified as a treatment relatively recently (it was still recommended in case of pneumonia in a 1942 medical textbook).

The tradition of bloodletting started among Egyptians, spread onto the Romans and the Greeks and so on until it reached its peak in 19th century Europe.

The reasoning behind bloodletting came from the understanding of disease that people of the past had: it was believed that existence as a whole was connected to the four basic elements (earth, air, fire, and water) all of which were represented in humans through humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile). Being ill meant having an imbalance of the four humors and the cure, logically, was removing an amount of the excessive humor.

Having considered that, we could speculate that the Bloodletter does heal in its morbid way. "This is the only effective means of expelling tainted blood," stated the original user and the creator of the weapon. “Tainted” could be interpreted as overfilled with vermin or affected by the beastly scourge, many occurrences of the Bloodborne universe could be tied to fit this story. And by using the Bloodletter the wielder does literally expel the blood of their enemies and their own.

It is widely speculated that the lore behind this weapon hints on the practice of bloodletting and this connection doesn’t seem out of place. However, to me there is more to the symbolic nature of the weapon than this practice. After all, bloodletting wasn’t something done so carelessly: different parts of the body were responsible for different organs and the general practice was governed by astrology, as the time of year and the signs of the zodiac were believed to have a direct impact on the result of the healing.

The ever-present fear of projecting current concepts on the past is not directly applicable to the bloodborne situation: the game is inspired by the Victorian times but written by the people from our present, which makes me seek connections through which the Bloodletter could be understood and related to in the contemporary world. Getting rid of your tainted blood, paying with pain and health for the purifying experience - this logic is not foreign to our modern environment at all. Even though bloodletting as a medicine is now considered a pseudoscience and the special healing blood is absent, people still cut, burn, poison and mutilate themselves in every possible way.

 

**SELF-HARM**

 

Visually the action of the transformation resembles seppuku (self-disembowelment), a method of taking one’s own life practised by men of the samurai class in feudal Japan. The resemblance is there only on a level of a symbol since seppuku in itself is a complicated ritual and can hardly be narrowed down to a fatal wound to the stomach. Still, this connection shows that the transformation could be considered a suicide attempt.

So, how would one's body react to the "purifying experience" of getting stabbed by the Bloodletter?

Here’s how your Bloodborne body would: no matter how hard you tried, an attempt is all you would get.  
The death that you get in Bloodborne is only a pseudo-death, as you reawaken after it every time quite pissed but very much alive.

If death is no longer the end, self-induced deaths become self-harm and every suicide turns into a suicide attempt. What Bloodborne does here is claim your rights to death. An interesting topic in itself; as suicide and parasuicide in their nature and reasons are often different phenomena. This game, however, rightfully ignores that difference, heals all your self-inflicted cuts and bruises and tells you to start again.

 

Let's talk about self-harm then, since that’s all the game lets us do. First of all, what is self-harm?

Defining this occurrence is and has been a complicated task since self-harm as a phenomenon, is glued together by the practices, technologies and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, treated, and represented and by the various interests, institutions and moral arguments that mobilized these efforts and resources.

The understanding of self-harm varies and depends on the social environment, thus it is near impossible to give it a definition that would fit our constantly changing world, let alone the Bloodborne universe.  
We must keep in mind that our current perception wouldn't be directly applicable to their world, considering that our understanding of self-harm can hardly fit our own past.

However, we can still look at this situation from our experiences and try to pinpoint the Bloodletters place in it.

Why do people self-harm?

Most popular answers to this question usually speak about:

1\. the desire to regulate feelings of intolerable tension (either sadness, emotional overload or the opposite: numbness, lack of feelings)  
  
2\. a means of managing and controlling pain (in contrast to the pain that the person has experienced earlier and couldn't control, e.g., abuse)

3\. a way to dissociate or to end dissociation (use the pain as a distraction from the emotional pain; substitute emotional with physical)

Obviously, there are other reasons for that and the fact that these are the most wide-spread speaks more about our modern concerns, setting and needs than self-harm as a whole.

It is here that I'd like to mention that the Bloodletter is not the only weapon in the game that has elements of the self-damage.

The other such weapons are the Chikage (a katana; consumes approximately 0.85% HP/s when transformed, damage comes from blood) and the Rakuyo (a double sword; the original owner repeatedly stabs herself with it during the battle).  
Both of these weapons are smooth, sharp and even relatively clean-looking (a huge deal in Bloodborne), they feel almost reasonable to use for self-harm.

The same can't be said about the Bloodletter.

While the Rakuyo and the Chikage are smooth, metal, aesthetically pleasing blades, the Bloodletter is a mace that in its transformed version grows something resembling a tumour at its tip with spikes protruding in different directions. The dirty look of the weapon makes it seem more painful, not in any way sterile and bluntly speaking, disgusting.

It contrasts with the clean look of the Rakuyo or the Chikage, which might be conceptually closer to self-harm as a means of self-help or mental pain relief.

If these “conventionally accepted” reasons for self-harm don’t fit the Bloodletter, then what could?

Considering that what makes it stand out from the other weapons of similar mechanics is its disgusting visuals, fear of inevitably getting an infection from the self-inflicted wound or perhaps even the Bloodletter getting stuck, it could be as simple as the desire to humiliate and disgrace oneself. It could be a desire to cause a long-lasting damage. To offer yourself no relief whatsoever.

Thinking of the Bloodletter I keep mentally returning to one sentence I stumbled upon while gathering material for this paper: "The term "self-mutilation" occurred in a study by L. E. Emerson in 1913 where he considered self-cutting a symbolic substitution for masturbation".

 

**SEX**

 

"What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. It implies something vague, unknown, or hidden from us." - C.G.Jung

 

Considering that the main motivation for a player to transform the weapon is to deal more damage in battle, using the Bloodletter could be a symbol to something even bigger. On top of that, the Bloodletter looks organic, almost alive.

The other weapons presented in the game are mostly pistols, knives, swords and hammers, which makes the Bloodletter stand out, pardon the implication. These other weapons are destructive, clear and precise in their design and function. A weapon that FEELS like a weapon - cold, uncaring steel, just like the Rakuyo or the Chikage; the damage it brings is almost excusable due to how inhuman it is.

Unlike anything else, the Bloodletter doesn't LET the user distance themselves from it. To use it, the player has to embrace (quite literally) this connection. There is no hiding of the malicious intent, there is no denying that the intent comes from the wielder of the weapon, there is no denying of the wish behind this intent as the user sacrifices their health for it.

Like seppuku that is an extremely painful and slow means of suicide and has been used to demonstrate courage, strong resolve and to prove the sincerity of purpose. There is sincerity of purpose in the Bloodletter.

Its honesty reaches its peak during the transformation.  
The user plants the Bloodletter in their belly and lets it grow, then tears it out, bringing it into the real world.

"The fall into water or raising out of it symbolizes birth."

 

 

The bond that develops between a person and their weapon of choice is deeply personal. The connection of a person with the weapon for their self-harm runs even deeper. The Bloodletter, being both at the same time, reflecting the world that it comes from in its coat of meanings and symbols becomes something that could out-intimate all of them.

It becomes a part of the person, gives them contact, embraces them, shares their flesh and blood. It is a companion of sorts that can bring whatever the wielder might need: pain or health, damage or purification, self-mutilation or pleasure.

Blood stands for life, and blood is also the archetypal symbol of the soul, life energy and the Bloodletter is someone you’re willing to share it with.

  
**BIBLIOGRAPHY**

  1. Myths-Dreams-Symbols, mythsdreamssymbols.com/jungvsfreud.html.
  2. “Bloodborne.” Playstation, www.playstation.com/en-us/games/bloodborne-ps4/.
  3. Chaney, Sarah. “Why Should We Care What the Victorians Thought of Self-Harm?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 15 Aug. 2017, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-history-self-harm/201708/why-should-we-care-what-the-victorians-thought-self-harm.
  4. Eengelhaupt. “Bloodletting Is Still Happening, Despite Centuries of Harm.” Phenomena, National Geographic | Phenomena, 12 Jan. 2016, phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/27/bloodletting-is-still-happening-despite-centuries-of-harm/.
  5. Jung, C. G., and Marie-Luise von Franz. Man and His Symbols: by C.G. Jung, and Others. Doubleday, 1964.
  6. Millard, Chris. A History of Self-Harm in Britain: A Genealogy of Cutting and Overdosing. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2015.
  7. “Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine.” Bloodletting, broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/bloodletting.
  8. Spiegel, Alix. “The History and Mentality of Self-Mutilation.” NPR, NPR, 10 June 2005, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4697319.
  9. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Seppuku.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Mar. 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/seppuku.
  10. “Vampire, The Archetype.” Vampire, The Archetype (Tallahassee Center for Jungian and Gnostic Studies), jungian.info/library.cfm?idsLibrary=9.
  11. Watts, Jay. “Why Do People Self-Harm? You Asked Google – Here's the Answer | Jay Watts.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/google-autocomplete-why-people-self-harm.
  12. “Bloodletting.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/bloodletting.
  13. “The History of Bloodletting.” BC Medical Journal, www.bcmj.org/premise/history-bloodletting.




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